Friday, February 19, 2016

This is more of a tragedy rather than a weird news, but it does sound weird in some way or the other. People in many parts of the world are desperately poor; poor not to the extent that they have older TV's or have to restrict their eating out, but poor to the extent that they find it difficult to ensure that they get a meal at every meal time. In such a time, when there is a sudden need for money, it gets impossible. Something has to give, and it makes for tragic reading.
In the current case, this is a family in India that is desperately poor; so when the husband and father of the family gets ill and dies, things go totally haywire. In the end, just to ensure that the funeral of the husband can take place, the wife takes her minor sons and hands them to the neighbor so that she can get some money for the funeral. This is such a horrific story (link to article):

a heart-wrenching tale of poverty from a mineral-rich region of Odisha, a widow was forced to pawn her two minor sons for money to perform the last rites of her husband in Champua. Her tragic story came to light on Wednesday after block development officer S Nayak and other officials visited Champua on receiving information about the 'mortgaging' that occurred on Republic Day.
Sabitri Nayak, a tribal from Gadhuli village in Keonjhar district, handed over her sons Mukesh (13) and Sukesh (11) to her neighbour for Rs 5,000 when she could not perform the last rites of her husband, Raiba, the breadwinner of the family.